Al Jazeera Wrote ‘Alleged Holocaust’ in Article?

On May 13, 2024, X account @NiohBerg posted what appeared to be a screenshot of an article by Qatari news network Al Jazeera. The user underlined the words “alleged Holocaust” in red. “Thank you, Al Jazeera, very cool,” the user wrote. The post had received more than 616,100 views and 2,800 likes, as of this writing.

The screenshot was authentic, meaning that it was not falsely generated or digitally altered in any misleading way. We were able to find the article [archived here] on Al Jazeera Arabic; it was not available on Al Jazeera English. The article, titled “Danish Minister for Muslims: ‘Your fasting is a danger to us” [translation by Google Translate], described difficulties faced by Muslims and immigrants in Denmark.

The full paragraph, as translated by Google Translate, is as follows:

This same paragraph, translated by translation software DeepL – which describes itself as “the world’s most accurate translator” – does not include the word “alleged.”

If the translation does indeed accurately say that the Holocaust “allegedly” happened, it would not be the first time Al Jazeera faced criticism for downplaying and misrepresenting the Holocaust. In 2019, Al Jazeera suspended two journalists over a video that claimed the “Zionist movement had misrepresented the extent of the Holocaust” and had “adopted the narrative” that Nazis killed 6 million Jewish people.

We reached out to Al Jazeera for clarification or comment as well as several Arabic experts for input on the accuracy of the translation, and will update this story if we receive a response.

Given the contradicting translations of this passage, and the fact that we have not yet been able to independently confirm the nature of the paragraph or the accuracy of the word “alleged,” we have rated this claim as “Research in Progress.”

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